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Red Hat Bellydancing

Today I had the first chance to meet up with ladies from the Red Hat Society! I’ve been trying to get a “chapter” started myself (Millinery Madames), but I’d wanted to also join a chapter so I could meet more new people. I had been looking for a chapter that had other “Pink hatters” in it (women under 50). But haven’t been able to find one (hence trying to form my own). I was a bit worried that since I’m only in my 30s, I’d feel very out of place in a group of women over 50, but I thought I’d go along and see if it did feel weird or not.

I’m getting together a reasonable outfit of lavender clothing (the long sleeved top is purple, but I have the lavender scarf and sleeveless top, so that’s fine) and I’ve fixed up my pink hat to make it a bit more interesting (the pink/lavender are the colours we have to wear)

(I picked up the plain pink hat at an op shop for $6, and I’ve added the tulle, feathers and pink flowers.

It was lovely! Age only ever really came into it a couple of times, things like when we mentioned our children – theirs of course being around my age, and mine being only 9. But I felt welcomed, and never excluded – it was really lovely. Looking forward to catching up with them again next month.

I wasn’t able to stay long there, as I also had a bellydance performance in the afternoon.

The nursing home we’ve performed at before, has been begging us to come back 🙂 The residents really seem to enjoy it (I guess it’s something different and interesting for them), so I think it’s a nice thing for us to do, to dance for them and brighten their day. And funny as it might seem, but they are the most appreciative audience I’ve ever danced for! I’ve danced on stage and in fairs and things, and had the occasional person smile or say it was nice, people clap and cheer. But while most of the residents don’t smile or anything during the performance, several of them will thank us after we’ve danced, telling us we looked beautiful. They really sound grateful, in a way no other audience is.

We did 4 dances together as a troupe, and I did a solo dance using my fanveils for the first time. I’ll have to wait to see how the video of the performance looks, since I’ve never been able to see how it looks when I’m doing the fanveils, but I think it went well 🙂

As usual, our camera is TERRIBLE inside, but the outside photos turned out nicely.